What We Do When We Don't Have Our Boys

Today Raleigh and Madeline got to play with a friend.  Her name is Lily and she lives on the 12th floor.  We met her and her mom out on the 4th floor parking garage to ride scooters and play with sidewalk chalk.  We chose the 4th floor because part of it is open to the sky and no one ever parks there.  A great place for scootering and drawing.  Lily doesn't have a scooter, so the girls all took turns.  Choobers pushed her baby in a stroller.  (And she can say "baby" now!  Pretty timely, now that she's almost two!!  She says it like: Buh-BAE, as if it were a question.)  

We had a fun time, but it's hard not to compare it to playing with our boys in Utah.  We miss those boys.  They're pretty much irreplaceable.

I don't know how she knew it, but all of a sudden, Lily's mom got up and took cover, warning everyone to get under the parking garage.  Except for the black clouds rolling in, there was no sign of rain.  (hee hee.)  She had some 6th sense because the sky just EXPLODED after that!  No sprinkling.  No nothing.

Since the kids were already DISGUSTINGLY dirty from kneeling down on the parking garage floor and playing with sidewalk chalk, I told them to run back out in it and have themselves a "wet and dirty adventure."  They did!  

I think it was pure childhood bliss.  They took laps around and around on the scooters, laughing and dancing forever.  Then the water pooled up in certain places and they got on their hands and knees, acting (and smelling) like wet dogs.  It was so fun!  And gross!  And the rain was COLD!  Kensington was a little confused at first, but after a few minutes she was stomping around, screaming and laughing with the rest of them!  

When it was time to go inside, I was hoping that the elevator would be empty and we could go upstairs unnoticed.  Unfortunately, the adult-to-kid ratio in our building is like 100/1, and we kind of stand out as it is.  Murphy prevailed.  The doors opened, and all of us wet dogs tromped onto the elevator with this beautiful black woman, dressed elegantly for a night on the town.  Her eyes were probably as wide as ours as we tried to stay on our side of the elevator.  To make things worse, someone had pressed every single button on the elevator before we got on, so it had to stop at every floor.  A couple of times the doors opened with someone ready to get on, but then they decided not to!

Ha ha.  That's funny.